Tin Pin Roulette
by Senri
Summary: A series of TWEWY shorts. Humor, angst, and everything else included. Mostly genfic.  Chapter four: Rhyme draws, and the Composer creeps all over the place.  Gen.  Chapter five: have some ensemble.  "There exists a world..."
1. Shiki and Neku: someone is watching

**Genre:** Gen  
**Warnings:** T  
**Characters:** Shiki, Neku, narrator  
**Notes:** A little ridiculous.

-

I watch you watching her, these days.

I watch the way she makes you smile and I watch the smiles you draw from her - rare smiles even now, when expressions of open happiness come that much more easily to her face. I believe these smiles make you think that she is yours.

You would be incorrect in every particular on that part, Neku Sakuraba.

She is mine.

She has always been mine, and unaware of this though you may be, the point stands. I have a greater claim on her than you do in every way. Her bright and joyous Soul is mine, an adjunct to me. Her craft is mine; I am its beginning, its pinnacle, and its end. When night falls, she returns with unwavering faith to me - and even if sometimes in those private hours her words turn towards you, she is mine. Unwitting as it might be. Unwilling as you might be to admit it.

You have discounted me for now - which you may, indeed. Your underestimation would be insulting, but your utter unawareness renders it laughable instead.

You hardly listen, Neku Sakuraba, and thus (of course) you do not hear me. But still I would have you mark these words and mark them well, for they shall be your bane:

You may think you have her now, and perhaps (I'll grant you this much) - perhaps, in those melting, brief, glittering hours while you enjoy her presence, perhaps you do.

But she is mine.

I can see how you would be compelled by her, but seeing this will not stay my paw or win you any mercy. In this game, you are the squeaking, stupid, unaware rodent, and I am the cat poised to strike. You have damned yourself, Neku Sakuraba.

She is mine.

---

"I made lemonade," Shiki said, turning and balancing the two tall glasses carefully on her tray. "I thought since it's such a hot day we could sit on the balcony and -"

Sentence unfinished, she blinked in surprise, staring at her friend. Neku looked as defensive as he ever had in the first week she'd known him, hunched into his collar with his shoulders pushed up, glaring stonily in the direction of her counter.

Shiki followed his gaze more out of reflex than necessity. She already knew what was up.

"Neku -"

"Can you move him to your room, Shiki?" He sounded positively pained. "_Please._ It seriously is just like he's staring."

Shiki bit her lip to keep from giggling and swallowed, setting the tray down before she reached out to touch Neku's shoulder. He twitched a bit before jerking his gaze to meet her eyes.

"I know on the UG he was a little… odd," Shiki said, doing her best to give him her nicest, gentlest, coaxing-the-stubborn-Neku smile. "But he's just a regular plushie here, and besides - he's special to me! He's the first thing I ever made. I know he still looks kinda weird, but I can't put Mr. Mew away! You'll just have to learn to live with him, okay?"

Neku glanced from her to Mr. Mew. From her to Mr. Mew.

"Neku?"

"Okay," he muttered, his eyes lingering on the counter where the aforementioned cat plush sat harmlessly. "Okay, okay. I'll try."

"Good!" she smiled, reassured, setting one chilled glass in front of him. "Now, about our math homework -"

In short order the two of them had moved out to the small apartment balcony and were bent over their textbook together in relative peace. The only sounds left in the room were the hum of the fridge, the faint rush of traffic, and the quiet remarks passed between Neku and Shiki.

Unseen by both of them, Mr. Mew's large button eyes glittered coldly.


	2. Neku and Joshua: under the gun

Genre: Gen  
Warnings: T  
Characters: Neku & Joshua  
Notes: For the 31_days community on livejournal. Prompt was "under the gun". A short shortie.

-

- and _this is it_ - go time. The gun cold and lighter than it seems like it should be in his hands, this thing that can turn the world over, that can destroy a world and save a world and make a person new. The other gun – Joshua's gun – _the end of the line_ - Neku stares at it. He lines his eye up with the barrel and meets that precocious deadly darkness with his own gaze and feels it staring back into him.

And this is so much more than him – this is Shiki shouting at him, _he's not a pig he's a CAT!_ and Beat snickering to himself as he pushes the button and two idiot reapers who tried repeatedly to kill him and this partner, his middle partner, who is probably going to.

_Shiki_, Neku thinks, and _Beat_, and also maybe _Shibuya_.

He raises the gun.

He's still not sure what he will do.


	3. Neku and Joshua: pixel color

Joshua&Neku

---

On the second day there is ice cream. Neku gets the split cone, Joshua plain vanilla, standing while Neku sits on the curb to eat the soft-serve before the sun makes it into soup. He never did this kind of thing while he was alive, sidewalk-sitting, watching people go by in the simmering heat waiting for the slam-off to start.

He licks ice-cream off his hand and thinks of nothing, takes his eyes off Joshua for a second, too long - long enough for his partner colored various hues of dust to take out the tacky orange cell phone and, _click_, grab a photo of him, sitting on the curb with his feet in the street.

Neku looks back at him and blinks. It's hard to even think in the muggy summer throb, under the noon sun, noisy people milling around them. He feels freeze-frame paralyzed, but what's new? The whole week before was like that, running to get nowhere, and this one is just the same only worse.

"Don't look so glum," Joshua titters at him. "We're making memories, partner." And of course he's captured in pixel color just one more thing Neku wishes was long gone.


	4. Joshua and Rhyme: sunflowerscratch

Shibuya cooks when summer hits. Styles, and the streets, get hotter than ever; tempers rise with the temperature, and with proximity. Since school's out for the break, Beat's home more too, and since he's home more that means he sees Mom and Dad even more, which means that they can go after him asking what he plans to make of himself even more times in a week.

Rhyme is just glad she's home with him too. Most days, hers is the coolest temper in the house by far. Now especially it helps to calm her big brother down a little more, and Rhyme knows why, but she doesn't say anything. Just sneaks her smaller, softer hand into his big rough one so he can squeeze it hard. Beat has a bear of a grip; it reminds her of being little, playing bears and squirrels and not worrying about much outside of that, anything besides the importance of being Beat and Rhyme too far off to really think about.

Now they're growing up; they have things to worry about, like summer homework. Still, because Beat is Beat, and Rhyme is responsable but not an old lady, sometimes they both ditch days. She makes sure they're both greased up with sunscreen, and if they're not going something with Neku or Shiki or Eri, or going to the swimming pool or having something at Mr. H's café just them, Rhyme walks with him to the skate park. She doesn't board herself, but she has a deluxe-size box of sidewalk chalk and the ability to entertain herself while Beat works his tricks. Usually.

Summer homework is going good, except for the art project; she's supposed to write a short story too, only she hasn't even started thinking about that and there aren't any ideas rustling around in the back of her head either (she's checked). The rest of it can be more or less done by rote, even if she's not absorbed in it, and for the first time Rhyme has the novel experience of being an item of concern to her parents. "You don't seem as talkative lately," and she overheard her Dad talking to her mom last week, something about "it's years too early for her to be acting like a bored teenager. Is it Beat?"

Rhyme doesn't have much of a temper, but she does wonder how they can think Beat is bored. He's a teenager in a lot of ways, but he's not _bored_.

Thinking that their parents might eventually want to separate them is pretty scary, even after everything. But they both dealt with scarier, so if it comes down to it... Rhyme can tag along to the skate park and not worry for a while.

All of Beat's friends know her, and they know better than to razz Beat about having her along too. She's friendly with most of them anyway, finding as usual that people respond to the treatment they're given. She waves and smiles at all of them upon arrival in response to the wave of "yo, Rhyme, hey, how's it hanging," Beat elbowing his laughing buddy for that one, of course, and she watches them pull tricks for a while before she finds her own quiet spot on the pavement. She has work to do, after all.

There's nothing in her head, no crackle of inspiration, but forgoing that, maybe just plowing through will make a difference. Try, try again, like they say. If at first, second, third she fails...

She scratches circles first. The biggest one is as big as a plate, the smallest the size of her fist, and stalls there for a moment. What's something interesting that can come from this? She looks at what she's started and bites her lip, trying to reach... something.

They could be bubbles. Someone could be blowing bubbles... or part of a piece of cheese, with holes? She wipes sweat off her forehead, it's hot on the pavement, and then shakes herself. Neither of those thoughts is very interesting even if they're both possible. She has to go on.

She adds more circles outside and inside, so they're concentric, circles in circles. Like ripples in a pond, only that's not what she's looking for either. What else? She draws a line from each circle, and now they could be balloons. Someone selling balloons – only she didn't connect all of the lines in a point, so it can't be that. Maybe a balloon seller who accidentally let them all go -

Rhyme squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. Then she opens them again and looks as hard as she can. Makes marks at the base of each straight line, marks the straight lines green, and firmer. Sunflowers. They're sunflowers, for summer.

Going back to the flower part is easy. She makes the centers dark, full of seeds, and fills the outer concentric circles with yellow lines and color. Flower petals.

Since they're on stalks anyway, leaving the green lines alone is easy. She just has to do leaves, so that's what she goes back to, clutching the green chalk. She makes them bigger, spiky, giving time to each one and adding a few more going up on each stalk (she's a city girl, but she's pretty sure sunflowers are like that. Leafy). They have to be interesting, those leaves, just like the flowers. She makes outlines first before she starts to mark the leaf in. Not solid, but jaggy lines, as snarly zig-zag as she can remember, like tattoos tangling with each other, jolting static and sound. The kind of sunflowers that would go in a skate park. It doesn't come so naturally to her.

It's only when she finishes that she realizes what she's drawn is more from memory than her own head. She's drawn sunflower Noise, the flowers vibrant, and the leaves bristling sharp.

Rhyme sits cross-legged and puts her chin in her hands. Her shirt sticks to her back with sweat, and she feels thirsty. The flowers look... weird.

Definitely part Noise, which gives her... a bit of reflexive creep, but she _was_ a Noise for a while, and it probably saved her, so -

"Pretty. I don't know what I'd do with them, though."

Rhyme jumps, looks up, and then reflexively looks down again. Slate blue eyes and ashy hair linger in her mind anyway.

Someone she knows, but hasn't talked to much; usually there's a buffer there, Beat standing guard, watching like a hawk. And a rare company, anyway.

"No hello?" He sighs, put-upon. "Where are your manners?"

Rhyme swallows with reflexive guilt for more reasons than that. "Sorry," she says, quick but polite, and then, because he's here, and becuse she did draw a Noise even if it wasn't on purpose, "I didn't mean to do that."

"Slow down, tiger. Start with the basics, why don't you?"

After a moment, Rhyme looks up. He's watching her with his head tilted, as if he's studying a particularly adventurous ant striking out on its own across the pavement.

She might be small, but... "Hi," she says. It's even not unfriendly, just a little shy, and maybe nervous. But. He brought her back too, after all, even if she lost, and shouldn't have had the chance at all. Even if he makes Neku nervous, and her brother kind of mad... Shibuya is still here, and so is she.

Joshua flicks his hand. There's not a drop of sweat on his forehead; he hardly seems to feel the heat. Maybe he really doesn't?

"Good afternoon, dear. That took quite a bit out of you, didn't it?"

Rhyme looks back at the flowers, blinking. He doesn't seem especially annoyed, but he might not either way, and she finds herself fiddling a bit with the chalk she's holding anyway.

"I didn't think I was doing anything. It won't... do anything, will it?"

He tuts. "You didn't answer my question. My, however would your brother react to you straining yourself so?"

He's teasing, or at least she thinks he is. Rhyme ducks her head a bit. It's not the first time someone's poked fun at her, but in this case she's not entirely sure what she should say. "It's okay. I'm okay. Beat knows I'm not that delicate." She's less so in some ways than he is, actually. Joshua shakes his tousled head.

"Don't you think he should be watching out for you better? Look at you over here all alone, dear. Why, practically anything could happen to you. It would only take you catching some malicious stranger's eye and he might never even know what happened." His smile doesn't waver a bit. "Wouldn't that be a shame? Hee hee."

Well, she can't miss the little joke in there, but there's at least one obvious point she can make, even if he is probing for a reaction. Rhyme raises a chalky hand and smiles. "I'm not all alone."

He giggles again, lightly, a touch mocking, definitely at her, not with her, and Rhyme ducks her head again. It's not hard to keep her own smile on her face, though. She supposes saying something like that was a little bit corny. If Joshua isn't a complete stranger, he's mostly one.

"Cute." When she looks up again his phone is in his hand and he's toying with it, flicking it open and shut, snap-snap, regally bored and still studying her chalked efforts. He bats long, dusty eyelashes at her when he catches her looking. "It'll go away next time it rains. Too bad." Simper, simper.

"It's okay." Rhyme shrugs. "It's chalk." And because of that, she knew it was all going to be gone before she even started.

"Why did you bother?"

"It's fun."

"Is it?"

Fun. Pretty. Hard work. Frustrating. Slow. A painstaking effort at feeling her way along, reaching out for something that seems so far away from her sometimes. For a second, she bites her lip. "It's pretty, too. And I thought I should."

"Why did you think that?"

"Because it's hard." She scrapes the green chalk against the ground again, just making a random line this time, no pictures or tattoos.

A pause, where neither of them says anything. And then he shrugs and sighs, brushing off the overwhelmingly tedious frustrations of having a conversation with her. "What a martyr. Pretty or not, I can't imagine what we'd do with flower Noise."

"You wouldn't have to do anything with them. They could just be there." He's laughing at her again, and Rhyme sort of protests without being entirely sure why. "I don't see why they couldn't."

"_Someone's_ full of bright ideas," he titters at her, giggling like a metronome, one-two tee-hee.

Rhyme looks down again, only a little ruffled, but not really feeling bad. He's just like a cat, really. Aloof, uncatchable and sly, not impossible to like, if you like cats (and don't mind feeling like a mouse ninety-nine percent of the time. Her sunflowers are big and bright, chalked lines firm enough that the colors nearly glow against the dirty pavement.

"It wasn't really my idea." She touches one spiky leaf. "It was just what I remembered."

"Of course," he shrugs, not obligated to comfort or even pretty words or anything, as usual, she supposes. Then the giggle, again. "Energy flows, dear."

There's another part to that – she remembers that, but not what it is, right now. Just a curious glance doesn't net her any answers, either; only him, still smug, crouched next to her on the pavement.

"Is Neku coming?" she asks, after a moment. Usually Joshua only turns up when Neku is involved.

For his own part, the Composer shrugs. "Neku and I aren't joined at the hips, dear. He's a little young for that yet anyway. And besides, it's my city. I can go where I like."

A pause, where she wonders. Did he just – of course he did. But.

"So, should I keep my eye out?" Rhyme asks him, daring to tease back (and maybe a little curious in her own right, anyway). Her face feels a little hot, the possibility that it's just from the sun unlikely.

"Oh, probably not," he bats back, so quick she's almost certain he was expecting the question. "I do have a job to do, dear... unfortunately."

Then he's unfolding from where he was crouched close to her, tapping one black shoe against the pavement like he's really just some wandering kid. Rhyme considers that answer and decides she'll keep her eyes open anyway – he showed up this time, after all.

Joshua brushes hair out of his face, unconcerned by the lack of response. "Dear me. It looks like your brother's coming this way – perhaps I should take my leave before it finds it necessary to throw a protective fit, mm?" He smiles on, sharp as broken glass. "Do have a good afternoon, dear. Best of luck with those homework projects."

"Bye," Rhyme says, but she's already talking to the empty air.

Then Beat is grabbing her up and swinging her around, big and strong, not too rough. "Yo, Rhyme, you okay over here? Watcha working on?" He closes his arms around her a little tighter when he gets a good look at her flowers. But, uncharacteristic of Beat, he doesn't say anything, just swings her along faster, his skateboard clamped under his other arm. "I'm starving, les' get something to eat. You up for Sunshine?"

"Beat, Beat, wait, my chalk, slow down," but she's laughing, and he puts a hold on so she can pick up her few things and he can stare at what she drew. When she's ready, she has to take his hand and tug before he moves.

She thinks, while she walks, of stories. _Once upon a time, there lived a Prince who ruled over a beautiful city, and sometimes he went out to meet the people who lived there, but the Prince could be very difficult, and because of this even when he went out, he was very lonely..._

She comes out of it with Beat shaking her shoulder more or less carefully. "You sure you all right? Rhyme? Sis? You in there?" They're at Sunshine, and th girl behind the counter is leaning over looking a little worried too.

"Did she get too much sun? Here, you can have a free lemonade." Rhyme scrambles to assure and apologize, no, she's all right really, but too late, cup and straw are already being passed over the counter and Beat is ordering burgers (extra pickles on his) and fries.

That brief, shining moment where Rhyme held the thread of something (a _story_) so lightly between her fingers is gone, and – like so many things – impossible to reclaim. But. But, but.

Fall down seven times, get up eight. There's always another moment. Like they say.

Rhyme sneaks off to wait for Beat in an empty booth, and whlie she has these moments, to close her eyes and do her best to reach those words again.


	5. Ensemble: there exists a world

_There exists a world..._

...but what kind of world? It's still hard to tell. They're all still growing into it, shuddery like fawns.

Shiki and Eri are doing a new line with butterflies, embroidered mostly, subtle little triangle wings and flecks of light plus color against the fabric. Fluttery clothes for hot days. "A butterfly beating its wings in China can make a hurricane across the world," Shiki says when Neku asks, doing that shy smile that opens like a night-blooming flower, closing when too much sun touches it. It stays in her eyes, though.

"I can't take any credit," Eri beams. "Awesome idea, right? And it's all from Shiki!" The aforementioned smiling and averting her eyes to the fabric quick, the needle gleaming and full of promise, spinning out gossamer fragile worlds from a small metal point.

Beat is wearing them too. Subtle ones, he's too much of a guy for anything else. "Jes' because it's impossible to say no, yo!" like he honestly has to defend himself because he bent to Shiki and Eri's collective will to Neku (although Neku has never shared that story about Shiki forcing him to strip in the street. Even if he was invisible). The boom and roar of traffic, the clatter and rasp of his board, on the pavement or grinding rails.

Neku shrugs and admits it a little bit. "You fought them off better than me." His are in color, two butterflies in rampant, one blue, one orange. At least it fits the rest of his color scheme, mostly.

Mr. H puts out a sugarwater feeder in back of the WildKat, and even where there are no flowers real butterflies somehow live and crowd the thing, moving their wings lightly in the still air.

Neku catches Joshua, Shibuya zeitgeist, in the café one day, working on a latté and of course Joshua is working the look (he has real butterfly pins in his hair, with little butterfly cutouts on, and Neku swears, he does it just to screw around with him). "Cute, don't you think?" His eyes are the color of an eastern tailed blue (Mr. H has books on almost everything, etymology included. Everything is inspiration. Everything is potential).

There's a little white butterfly perched on the edge of the Composer's coffee mug, uncoiling a tight-wound proboscis to sip at the foamy, sweet, now-lukewarm liquid contained within. "They're good luck, you know," Joshua's smile is as fae as anything while he guides the spindly little thing onto his finger. So delicate it barely seems able to hold together - that, a little contained potential storm, right there.

Rhyme has a purple butterfly, proud and obvious, stitched on the shoulder of her pink shirt, and a purple mouth, from a grape popsicle. "I think," she says, her lips bruised dark, her smile serene, "we live in the world we make."

Neku dropped his sleeve in soda or something, he thinks. That's what must be attracting the three butterflies clustered there now; better than wasps. Three still little sources of storm and good luck, conglomerates made mostly of legs and antennae and wings and stupid dreams, wind and sunlight. Storms and the chance at changing the world.


End file.
